Once I start telling you about a massive swarm of white butterflies whose tiny corpses coated the tracks and caused two tramcars to crash in Florence at midnight in 1908 you will need to know that I am not the one who made it up.

Interestingly, the thing they specify as unusual in this article is the number of butterflies. That is the only thing I don’t have a problem with!

I know at particular times of year some species of butterflies will swarm in their thousands for the purpose of making thousands more.

The thing I don’t believe is that their presence is caused by heat and electricity in the atmosphere, unless they are Frankenstein butterflies.

I also think that usual butterfly behaviour doesn’t see them plummeting from the sky at midnight. I know, I know, plummeting is a little unlikely but I don’t want to think of them as fluttering gently down, alright?

Imagine filling out the insurance claim for that one. Road conditions: ummmm, slippery…

There seems to be a lot of artistic licence taken by some reporters way back then and not a lot of checking of facts. In fact very much like some of our newspapers today I suppose. Obviously they didn’t go very high up the food chain when it came to getting scientific verification, it sounds like just the janitor was on duty that night……..Unless of course the story is true , dn, dn dn !!

@ Candy and Metan – you two should collaborate on a monster story :p Reminds me of that bit in the movie Labyrinth where one of the fragile, pretty little fairies bites Sara. Don’t we have enough things that bite without adding butterflies to the list?